


Regarding the Losers Club, Statement Begins

by mrsmaisels (kaspbraktm)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Other, also mike hanlon and jon sims solidarity AY, in tma timeline set during s2, ships will be lowkey but present bc i am a sucker for Minimalism, this is a totally niche self indulgent fic, though the loser's statements will be as adults but some before and some after the Reunion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21858010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaspbraktm/pseuds/mrsmaisels
Summary: The statements given to the Magnus Institute by seven Americans regarding their encounters with and memories of the creature known as Pennywise the Clown. Discovered in 2016, shortly after Jane Prentiss' attack. How much do the losers remember, and how much can the Archivist piece together?
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 13
Kudos: 43





	Regarding the Losers Club, Statement Begins

[CLICK]

**ARCHIVIST:**

Statement of Benjamin Hanscom, regarding a note received during his time as Head Architect for the BBC Communications Centre. Original Statement given June 21st, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

**ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT):**

My mother always said that the less you want to talk about something, the more difficult you find it to talk about, the harder you find it to articulate, the more you might need to. I know she probably meant it for heartfelt talks about things I may have wanted, or needed, or might have needed to process as a kid, but I think it applies for this too. She raised me by herself, so I imagine she felt I might’ve had a lot of those. I don’t think I did. I don’t like to think about my childhood much, if I’m being honest. Don’t think I even remember most of it.

Either way, this isn’t something emotional or heartfelt. It’s something I don’t know how to begin talking about, even less so who I can talk about it with, which is why I’m going to try and write it down for you. You seem like the kind of people who would be interested, or at least interested enough to give me paper and pen and the time to sit down and do it, which is all I can ask for. Now I’m aware, and you made it very clear, that you don’t deal with dreams or fantasies or anything like that. Only real things that you can see and touch, whatever supernatural liberties can be taken on that, included. And believe me, this isn’t that. There are physical things involved. But it did start as … I can’t put it any other way better than recurring thoughts. More specifically, recurring thoughts about the building I was asked to build.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m an architect, and a pretty well known one. Recurring thoughts about what I’m about to build are what I get paid to have. And most of the time I have them gladly. But I have them in my own time. My own process. I start with lines, or shapes, or things – the Geller Private Museum, for instance, came from the clean lines of a stapler I saw at a stationary store - that turn into something different, once I take the intent, ideal personality and feel of the place into account to turn it into something else. New, to an extent. We have this saying in the field, that nothing is really new. We don’t invent. We regurgitate. And it’s our own personal spit that seals or breaks the deal. Pretty crass, but true. It’s important that I explain this, because it’s not how it happened for the new BBC communications Centre at all. Whatever thoughts you may have on it, I agree. You see, this is a structure that came to me fully formed. I didn’t have to _try_ to think about it. I didn’t have to concentrate; I didn’t have to search. I had it almost instantly after hearing about the contest to design it, and by the time I was on the plane for the first meeting, I knew there was nothing I could add to it.

There was nothing scary or supernatural about it at first. Why would there be? It’s my job, and I just felt lucky to have done it with what everyone around me referred to as a stroke of genius. I sign most of their checks, so I mean nothing by that. I was just glad to have a solid idea, to have it be liked and go through with it. The … let’s say, haunting quality of this idea began shortly after the first meetings. I’m by no means an artist, so I take no offense when my clients have proposals for changes or requests. I do my best to listen to them, am firm when I think they won’t work, and very open when I think they will. And I can’t say I behaved any different with this project. Not on purpose. There were concerns about the materials, and the cost, and the weather conditions. The space. I listened. I rejected, I accepted, and I tried to adapt. But I found myself coming back, time and time again to the original design. Sometimes after I came up with some improvements myself it was the executives who, one way or another, pushed me back.

I don’t expect anyone who isn’t a creator of some sort to understand how rare that is. To keep going back to the first draft. Especially one that felt less and less like my own the more we advanced on it. There were shapes and twists on it that felt uncharacteristic of me. But then again the bosses were pleased, so I was pleased. Made it easier to go on my weekly trips back to the US without emergency calls or Skype sessions or e-mails about last minute changes and questions. In retrospective I should’ve felt it was all too lucky to be good luck.

Trouble more of the kind you’re expecting started with construction. When we set down the bones of the place. Then I started having these dreams about the building. The place came fully formed to my mind from the beginning, yes, but it came in a sterilized way. Not as the building itself but as a scale. Neat and in clean white cardboard.

In the dreams I saw the building completed long ago. Completed in red brick and stained glass. All filthy and unkempt. It stood in the middle of someplace, someplace I somehow knew wasn’t London, and surrounded by a thick fog. And heat. Always the impossible combination of thick fog and heat. The dreams would always start in the basement.

I stood in the middle of the basement, or what would become the basement. I knew instinctively, because these were the walls in my mind. I looked around only to see old bookshelves made of rusty aluminium. The shelves were cramped with boxes, old books, newspapers, toys. I whipped my head to have a full look around the room. When I first moved I knew I was a kid again. I never had a good look at myself in any of my dreams, but I knew I was a child because I saw it in my hands and my feet and my pudgy belly sticking out in a way I forgot it ever did. And I felt the massive weight of me in a way I had all too gladly forgotten I’d ever felt. My hands, my whole body, felt sweaty and muddy. I didn’t recognize my clothes and I barely recognized myself but I _knew_ it was me. And I knew there was a presence there, too. I felt it. And I felt it _wanting_ me. Both wanting me to feel it and just wanting my presence in general. My sweat. The lump in my throat. I felt it. I felt it and I tried to compose myself, but the second I took a step forward, my instinct told me I had to _run_.

Now I’m not sure if it was instinct, or if it was this thing. Running was torture for me as a kid. I’d forgotten it but I knew and I felt the same old shame of being a fat kid running. The shame and the effort. I felt disgusted with myself as I bounced. I felt the embarrassment at my jaded, wheezy breathing. And at how slow my running was. Like the lucid part of the dream knew and remembered the difference between my running as a man and my running then. It was slow and endless.

I made my way up the stairs. On the first floor there were more shelves and books and I knew the place to be a library. My library. Was it mine because I’d invented it? If it was, it didn’t seem to care. It hated me now. I knew it did because I kept wanting to run and running, running all the way into a glass corridor. The glass corridor the BBC Com Centre is now famous for. The end of which I never knew in my dreams. I especially remember the glass corridor because running through it, with the ground below it lost in the thick fog, felt like _floating_.

In the first few dreams I just ran and ran and ran across the corridor for what felt like hours. Floated. The effort was such I closed my eyes with exhaustion, and jolted awake almost instantly. Going into work the next day was tolling. First because I never felt like my sleeping hours gave me any actual rest, and second because the construction site made me uneasy. The further it advanced, the more shape the building took, the less I wanted to be there. It made me sweaty and tired. I tried to keep smiling, and tell everyone what a good job they were doing. Keep their spirits up. Because it was a good job. Only I made my visits to the actual site more and more sporadic. Thankfully the crew took it at a sign of trust, and if I looked horrified to be there, no one seemed to notice.

The dreams kept getting worse. I didn’t just feel the presence, I started hearing it. Almost as soon as I started running. It laughed at me. The worst part of it was that it wasn’t some evil maniacal laugh. It was a genuine, gleeful laugh. Delighted to see me humiliated. Sweating. Chest pounding. The worst were the giggles. It went into these giggle fits that bounced across the corridor in ways I knew to be structurally impossible. Like it multiplied.

I did almost everything I could to avoid sleeping. I drank coffee. I watched TV. I tried splitting my sleep into naps, but no matter when or where or for how long, when sleep came, it was always the same dream.

Then I said alright, it’s not sleep, it’s the dream. So I tried a low dose of Cortisol. It’s supposed to induce sleepless dreams. And I’m not a reckless man, not about my health. I did have a little nagging voice in my head telling me not to prescribe myself, to sleep my full eight-hours, reminding me the risks of co-dependency, the whole list. But I tried it anyway. Needless to say, it didn’t work. If anything, it only seemed to extend my sleeping periods of time. And to slow my dream-kid-self down. All and all, giving enough time for this presence to start gradually catching up with me.

The laughter didn’t seem to come from all over the place anymore. It came from behind me. And from all the dreams I had, those were the things that didn’t change. The building, the path I ran, and the voice. The laughter. Always whimsical and high pitched. It grew closer and closer until footsteps joined it too. There was nothing distinctive about them, they just started coming along as well. Closer and closer.

The slower I got, the louder and the nearer. Until the breathing was audible too. The first night I felt it, not just as a presence that may or may not be there, but _felt_ it, it was in the corridor. My pudgy self was running, had been running across it for some time now, and in the very last seconds before waking up I _felt_ it. Smelled it, even. A hot, rancid breath against my neck and almost directly into my ears. I hate to disclose it but I don’t want this to go understated: I wet the bed that time. The first of many after.

I was always nervous in my visits to the site. I won’t bore you with the details but even though the materials we were using are more modern and highly different from old red brick, watching the place where I was tormented night after night materialize around me felt surreal. The place that was coming together was luminous and I made a point of having it be as brightly coloured and kept as clean as possible for a construction site, but it was undeniably the same. I was reassured with every compliment on how, as you put it, nicely it was coming along. I made sure to never be alone when I was there. And I made sure no one worked too late either. The more highly ranked people thought it made me soft and gullible, the more hands on workers seemed grateful for it. I didn’t really care about either of those opinions. I just hated the idea of anyone, especially me, being there with no daylight.

I stopped taking the Cortisol as soon as I ran out of the first buy, but it didn’t do much to improve the situation either. Night after night the presence just kept gaining on me as I ran the same route and into the same corridor, and day by day the building gained on me too. I could hardly think of anything other than that building. Even back home at the States, I had to make an effort to stay distracted. Might’ve been worse there, with the tiredness of the jet lag.

A couple weeks ago, finally, _it_ caught up with me. The presence. When my kid body finally made it to the corridor I was so exhausted I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep going. My ears were throbbing and my heartbeat was louder than anything else. My chest ached and I thought I would either get a heart attack right there and then or I would puke. Either way, I’d have to stop. And it would get me. That idea chilled me so deeply I tried and made myself keep going, until I felt the ache in my chest pull my stomach to a twist and my knees gave in. I dropped to the floor and threw up, but all that came out of me was saliva like oil. It was pure fat. I wiped my mouth and got up as fast as I could, but I felt it grip my shoulder and I knew it was over. I closed my eyes.

I can’t tell you what its hand had felt like before, but the second I told myself that was it, that I was dying and that this thing was Death itself, the hand turned into slender, claw like bones. It gripped harder. “Long time no see, Benny boy” was the only thing it ever said to me aloud. It sounded like a music box. Whirly and joyful. I shook my head and pleaded for it to let me go. The lucid part of me must’ve known that somewhere, sometime, I had lived to adulthood and lay asleep, alive, because it did. Let me go. It dropped me roughly, almost with a shove, and I fell on my hands. As I looked up and back I saw it floating away through the corridor the same way it’d come. The Grim Reaper. Only under the dark cloak, its eyes glimmered in the shape of two orange balls. Like pompoms.

The next night it came again. As soon as I saw the basement I knew it’d gotten me before, and it would try and get me again. Only I knew it wasn’t death. That one specific fear had been overridden with the knowledge that I had an adult self. I existed and had lived until then, so I couldn’t die as I was in the dream. That made it change. This time it presented itself in a form I recognised from his hand alone: my high-school Coach. With impossible strength he held me up in the air, the cap he always wore covering his face. He carried me with his left hand, and with the right he grabbed and pinch and pulled my stomach non-stop. He laughed long and hard as he did so. I kicked and tried to wriggle free, but couldn’t. He shouldn’t have been able to restrain me like that, not in the air. Not with one arm, not with my weight. But he did.

During my pre-teen and teen years, I’d been teased about my weight, that’s no surprise. During my childhood too, probably, since I didn’t become an obese teenager overnight. Though that I don’t remember much of. Either way, this had been the man whose judgement and words had driven me to make a change. And to have him again mocking and exposing me broke me. The lucid part and the child too. I pleaded. I sobbed at the humiliation. That only made him laugh harder, poke and pinch with more intent. So I did something out of reflex. I made my mind leave. Made it focus on anything but what was happening. And the thing I focused on, the thing I saw, were the two orange pompoms hanging from his neck, decorating his whistle. The same two orange pompoms from the night before. I let myself be hypnotized by them, and at some point I woke. The dizzy feeling lingered all day.

In my dreams the thing kept coming and catching me, again and again. As different things. All with the pompoms, in one way or another. I know what you’re thinking and I thought it too. Up to this point, it all sounds like nothing but a series of stress induced nightmares. Perfectly normal for a man with a high-stress job in a foreign country. They happened in the building I was building and nabbed at long forgotten insecurities. Whatever feeling you think might’ve induced them, I was probably feeling it. And it would’ve been a damn normal thing to feel, too. I almost convinced myself of that and told myself they’d be gone when I finished the job. Until the day we set up the glass corridor.

We’d been building up to that day so this particular part of the process wouldn’t take longer than a day. Not per any of the BBC bosses’ request, but mine. I’d been dreading the day like I don’t think I’d ever dreaded anything before –and I was right to. We started the workday at seven am sharp and it was looking to be a long one. I don’t know if it was having me there, or if I was just giving a certain look, but everything went far better and smoother than you can hope for these things to go. Deliveries were on time and by eight sharp all hands were on deck. We’d asked for spares but not one glass broke. No one took a longer lunch break than they should’ve, and it was eerily silent. Maybe the eerie was just my impression, but everyone seemed as antsy to get this over and done with as I was, so there wasn’t much chatting or messing around. Things moved quickly and with precision. By five in the afternoon, it was almost finished. I got smiles and proud looks as people passed by me. And as it emerged before me, the corridor was a damn beautiful thing. The sun made it glisten in a way that was almost otherworldly, and whoever took a second to stare at it gawked. For anyone who didn’t know better it was almost magical. I felt it could be magical too, for a minute or two, as I saw it completed.

There were cheers and I called it off for the day. Let everyone have dinner at the site as they celebrated not only having kept up with schedule, but being done with what would be one of the most intricate and precise parts of the Centre. Gil, the general contractor, insisted I be the first person to set foot on it. Naturally I was reluctant. Sunset was upon me and the only thing worse than pitch darkness on that bridge, to me, would be an _orange_ sky.

I gently shook my head and said I was happy to admire it from the ground. But I guess the guys must’ve really liked me, because as Gil insisted, they chorused. They chorused, and whistled, and clapped until I had to agree. And up I went. I didn’t start at the basement, so that was a relief. I went slow and steady until I was at the brink. Then I stepped in and stood still. I waited. Nothing happened. I took a step forward. Nothing. I exhaled a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding and walked further. The view was, is, stunning. I waved down at the guys and they waved back at me, cheering. I gave them a thumbs up. Then I turned around to the nothingness on the other side and I saw it floating in. As slowly and steadily as I had walked. It knew where I was and I knew it was me it was coming to. A single red balloon with a note attached to the bottom. I froze and let it come until it stopped, inches away from me, inviting.

Once it was close enough I could see the drawing on it, facing me. All in white was the cartoon of a sleeping clown, a string of ZZZZZZZZZZs coming out of its mouth. But in its sleep it was grinning a shark-like grin. My forehead and hands covered in cold sweat I gulped and stared. The balloon waited and so did I. Seeing as I stood motionless, it nudged forward. I grabbed the note. It was a small card that simply read:

BETTER NOT SEE YOU SOON!  
Your friend, Pennywise the Clown

The two O’s of soon filled with a smiley face. I am no expert but I could’ve sworn the note wasn’t written in ink. It was written in a fine line of blood. That sickened me as soon as I realised it, and wretched into a coughing fit, falling on my hands. I coughed coarsely, and once I was on the floor I felt I began to choke. There was something caught on my throat. I coughed harder and harder until, like out of an old cat’s, out of my mouth came two perfect orange pompoms. More shocked than disgusted I held them and stared at them briefly. I heard Gil call for me, and as soon as I heard his footsteps against the glass the balloon POPPED ceremoniously. Quickly and thoughtlessly I shoved the pompoms and the card in my pockets and stumbled back up. He asked me if I was okay and I was in a clear enough state of mind to say yes, I had just somehow swallowed a fistful of dust but it wasn’t something that didn’t happen to the best of us at a busy site. He gave me an odd look and patted my back, but agreed. We got off the corridor and went back down. There was a toast with beers and we all went home.

By the time I parked on my porch, I’d forgotten about it. And the bad dreams too. In fact, if you had asked me this morning, I would’ve told you I had indeed swallowed a fistful of dirt and almost choked that evening, and that the process of getting there had been sleepless and stressful, but nothing else. Except.

Except when I picked up the suit I’d been wearing that day from the dry cleaners earlier today, Karla –that’s the lovely woman in charge of my dry cleaning –handed me back _the_ note and asked me if Pennywise is the kind of name clowns have in America. That shook me, deeply, and I said no. I remembered all of it, like whiplash, and I also suddenly remembered having heard of this place when my dreams first started and came as quickly as I could. I already left the card with another of your co-workers, which is why I replicated and described it here, but I leave it with you because I have the feeling this story will only exist as long as that does. And I certainly don’t want to keep it with me. The official inauguration of the Centre is this Friday. I’ll only make a brief appearance. I think that’s one building of mine I never plan to visit.

**ARCHIVIST:**

Statement ends.

This is a tricky one. Were it not for a few key details I would’ve agreed with Mr. Hanscom that his experience was nothing if not the result of some sort of stress induced psychosis over being the creator of such a widely despised –and by some, unexplicably beloved –piece of architecture. It was, however, the mention of a clown that intrigued me. A clown with a set of brightly coloured pompoms. More so that this presence, creature, never appeared to Mr. Hanscom as a clown, per se, but did sign as one. That bears obvious similarities with case 0051701, if not for the lack of dolls. There is also the fact that, when contacted for a follow up interview, Mr. Hanscom, though exceedingly polite, held no recollection of the incident, nor of ever having given a statement. He did, however, confirm having worked with Gil Lawrence, and his voice does sound, according to Tim, like that of the man who originally gave the statement. We also contacted with Mr. Lawrence and, what is even odder, he does recall Mr. Hanscom as described by Tim and not only that –but he also recalls a red balloon that day at the site, floating onto the bridge where Mr. Hanscom stood - while Mr. Hanscom does _not_.

I also decided that Pennywise the Clown warranted some looking into and what I found was … significant. Not without much digging I came across a series of newspapers announcing performances of a circus in the small town of Derry, Maine, in the United States, featuring one Robert Gray, employed as a clown under that very same alias. Not shortly after these performances there was somewhat of a local tragedy. Arson on a local business. Seemingly race related. This would all be disturbing enough on its own, but upon further investigation I discovered Mr. Hanscom also lived in the town of Derry, Maine during a large portion of his formative years. And that during his childhood there was another string of tragedies that ended shortly before Mr. Hanscom moved out of town. Our international … connections aren’t as well established as we would like them to be. While American police proved vastly uncooperative and, frankly, derisive, Derry’s local librarian, Michael Hanlon, seemed eager to cooperate with us. He provided some of the newspaper clippings and did not seem surprised to be approached about Mr. Hanscom … or _clowns_. All this leads me to believe there might be something genuine to this statement, and more to Mr. Hanlon’s eager cooperation than he is letting on. We will certainly be contacting him again, should any similar statements –particularly from Americans, - demand it. End recording.

[ CLICK ]

**ARCHIVIST:**

Supplemental. There is something about Mr. Hanscom’s statement that alarms me. Is it the amnesia? We’ve never had someone who has given a statement apparently forget it. Could it be his mind’s defence mechanism? What about the dreams? Could they have been a gap, a small opening in his memory? Or is it the more and more apparent link between certain … architectural tendencies and the events that occur within them? I don’t know. All I know is I am suddenly very, very afraid of what I might not be remembering. What the others might not be remembering. We could be, we could have been, in contact with something like this during the recent …. incidents and be completely unaware of it. May be. Or maybe what I find deeply disturbing about this particular statement is it leaves me with the impression we can’t trust our own minds. Let alone trust _each other_. Not for now. End supplemental.

**Author's Note:**

> this is completely self indulgent and i don't expect anyone to actually read it but if you did lmk it would make my life thank you!!!!!


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